Interesting the mention of Bill Romel's plating. I had one or two of his mouthpieces for old pre-war 280's - he designed an integrated slide channel that was never available on the older models. He used a homemade plating method that was not as effective as the big production platers. I had some mouthpieces done by one of those pro shops - I think it was Silvex - and the plating was more consistent and durable than Bill's. Those companies do a lot of plating on brass instruments - trumpets and the like. It's not cheap but if you have multiple pieces to be plated it's more practical. As I remember it they charged by what they could run through together, not so much by the piece. So one piece costs a lot.
doug tanner
